Not sure exactly, but I guess the dirty tricks are what really makes the difference. If you want to optimally solve a TSP, and know you are optimal when you sto

Not sure exactly, but I guess the dirty tricks are what really makes the difference. If you want to optimally solve a TSP, and know you are optimal when you stop, this is the approach you would use in practice - as far as I know it is the only thing that scales well. Its the underlying principle behind Concorde (http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/concorde.html http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/concorde.html) which AFAIK is the best TSP solver out there.